[Rarebooks] fa: HUGH BROUGHTON - A COMMENT UPON COHELETH or ECCLESIASTES - 1605

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, January 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ahbb9pw

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Hugh Broughton: A Comment upon Coheleth or Ecclesiastes: Framed for the instruction of Princf [sic] Henri Our hope. By Hug [sic] Broughton. [Amsterdam:] [n.p.] Anno 1605. FIRST EDITION. Small 4to (18 x 13.5 cm) bound in later half calf over boards, gilt-lettered titles to spine; [4] + 79 + [1] pp.; engraved decorated title leaf; woodcut initials. Printed partially in Hebrew. STC 3849; ESTC S105884.

Scarce work by the Hebrew scholar, puritan theologian and prickly controversialist Hugh Broughton (1549-1612). A former favorite of Elizabeth I (he was purported to have foretold the scattering of the  Spanish Armada in one of his sermons), he was less fortunate with her successor James I, and was not among the fifty-four learned men chosen in 1604 for the great revision of the Bible that would come to be known as the King James Version. Broughton's bitter chagrin at being excluded probably had much to do with his decision to leave England for awhile and to dedicate the present work not to the king, but to his son Henry, Prince of Wales, "our hope." He was an outspoken critic of the new Bible: "Tell His Majesty that I had rather be rent in pieces with wild horses, than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor churches… I require it to be burnt." Ben Jonson satirized Broughton in both Volpone (1605) and The Alchemist (1610).

Some, but not all, copies of this first edition include a terminal errata leaf which is not present here. Light wear and staining to the binding; title-page and succeeding two leaves have a closed horizontal slit starting at the gutter, ca. 2" long, as if caused by a razor; top margins shaved a bit, just touching a few page numbers and headers; light damp-stain to the edges of the first few leaves, occasional light spotting and soiling; otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound.